


Search For Memories

by madeof_it



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 09:10:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1852513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madeof_it/pseuds/madeof_it
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry is frustrated with his lifelong inability to remember his own parents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Search For Memories

He couldn't remember the sound of her laughter anymore. Not that he ever really could, seeing as he'd been so young when she'd been taken from him initially, but now even those scant memories he'd had were fading into oblivion.

 _"Where do memories go when you lose them?"_ Harry thought to himself.

Maybe there was a room in a giant castle, hidden except to those that performed the correct sequence of steps, like Hogwarts and its own Room of Requirement. Maybe somewhere there was a Room of Remembrance, filled with all the things that nobody could remember anymore -- like the colour of her hair on an autumn day, or the wrinkles that formed at the corner of her eyes when she smiled.

His parents' deaths (their _murders_ , he'd remind himself) were, to him at least, the most selfless and selfish things they could have done for him. Of course, he meant 'selfish' in an abstract way, in the non-purposeful way they'd left him alone with a group of people that were related to him by blood but couldn't have been more distant if they'd been on a different planet (Mars, maybe, as that had always been his favourite to learn about in school and seemed suitably far away).

It seemed cruel that Harry could still recall the sneer of Uncle Vernon or the part of Dudley's hair, and he couldn't remember if his own parents had special nicknames for him (or for each other, for that matter).

In the years following the war, when he was a Hero among the wizarding world, when he could get anything he wanted just for being Harry Potter The Boy Who Lived, all he wanted was to know them. He found old classmates, old co-workers, their neighbors, asked them questions about Lily Evans and James Potter and eagerly devoured their responses. He withstood the pitying looks in their eyes because he was hungry for knowledge of his mother, hungry for knowledge of his father, for these people that gave up their lives for him. Some shared memories, wisps of smoke in crystal vials that he'd lose himself in sometimes.

Most of the things he could still recall about them were second-hand memories fed to him by people who'd knew them then. 

There were questions that kept him up nights, lying still in his bed as he stared at the wooden slats in his ceiling. He'd count them over and over, losing himself in the numbers and calming his brain from the near-panic of feeling like he was losing his parents over and over again. It was loss he felt, loss every time he remembered something he had forgotten.

When he woke up one morning to sunlight streaming through his windows and someone's warm breath exhaling on the skin of his neck, he felt as though he'd lost so many of his own years to his search for memories. He wondered how many of his memories had been pushed aside to make room for the ones he held of his parents, and if there was a quota you could fill -- and any memories you created after went off to the made-up Room of Remembrance.

He spent that day with his eyes tracing everything in his flat, his fingers flitting over surfaces, trying to absorb all the information that he could. Even if he knew this behaviour was new and different from the inattention of however long he'd been half-living in the present, he was startled and saddened when his blonde-haired partner commented on it with some annoyance.

"Potter, you're staring at me and it's freaking me out."

The words were thrown over the shoulder of one Draco Malfoy, who was standing at the stove in a frilled apron, creating some omelette monstrosity that had entirely too much cheese.

Of course Harry knew that they were living together, that they were in love, that the wizarding world had gone into a flurry of excitement at the idea of the two former-archenemies becoming first business partners and then drinking partners and then two men with parted lips and parted legs under soft sheets. But it was possible that he'd forgotten, or not _seen_ the flecks of gold in Draco's gray eyes, the flick of his hair when he was nervous, the way he pouted when he was confused (like now).

Harry approached him slowly, like he hadn't laid eyes on him in days, like Draco was a desert oasis and Harry was dying of thirst but not sure it was real.

"Our children" he started, "Our children will know us both, and we will outlive their childhoods, and they will be raised with the proof that we've loved each other and we've loved them, and they'll know what my favourite colour is, and what you always ask for for your birthday meal." He took a breath, and didn't even bother to register the look of surprise on Draco's face before he continued.

"They'll know what our favourite school subjects were (Defense for me, always, and maybe Potions for you since Snape always coddled you a bit), and what we thought our adult lives would be like when we were eight-years-old (certainly nothing like this, I'm positive of that). They'll know how you take your coffee and the lilt in your voice when you lie (like earlier when you said my staring was freaking you out) and how I snore when I've had something to drink before bed. They'll know our friends and they'll know our family, and I'll fill their heads chock full of happy memories of the lives we'll lead them through, and they'll never spend their nights awake wondering who we were and who we are and who we wanted to be."

When he finished, Draco kissed him, and he felt the soft lips against his and the hands resting lightly on his hips, and then the fingers dipping into his waistband as love was poured into himself from this only man he'd ever love and knew this was one moment that was never in danger of being lost to him.


End file.
